Friday, January 01, 2010

In the darkness ...

And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

These are words from the first chapter of the book of Genesis. Bleak words for the beginning of a new year, don't you think? Waste, void, darkness, no sense of order or organization. Not much hope for improvement. As I reflected on those words I thought of some of the many people whose 2009 did not have a particularly happy ending. If an outsider, say a historian or someone like that 3,000 years into the future, were to judge these lives just on the closing days of 2009, one might say these lives were wasteful, void, dark. Their observations would be taken out of context, with no consideration of life before or after December, 2009.

In the same way, the waste and void and darkness at the beginning of Genesis is not all there is to God's creation of the world. The word "And" tells us there was something prior. And though the above statement is from Genesis 1:2, that is not the entire verse - there is something more.

Before the void, there is God. And during the darkness - before the famous words "Let there be light" - the Spirit of God is there.

What does this mean to us today?

We can find comfort. Before the void we may now feel, God was there. During our darkness, the Spirit of God is here. We were never without Him.

And we have hope. Our darkness need not last forever. God has given us Light.

(Jesus said) "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." - John 8:12